Can technology help? Or does the universal absorption of technology into an existing sphere such as creativity create myths for the student about its efficacy and their over-dependance/expectations of it.

When asked about the effect computers have had on design Milton Glaser said:

The computer and the devaluation of drawing skills have undoubtedly changed things. We are living in a “collage” world. The extraordinary availablity of historical and contemporary imagery means designers can find and assemble anything on screen.

You can take images from any moment in history, assemble them electronically, distort them, shift them, stretch them, colour them, and make them your own to some degree.

But you’re not starting with material that you have invented.

…

Certain skills have become irreparably lost. People have lost the motivation to draw because drawing seems unrelated to their vocational life. Drawing is the path to observation and attentiveness, Technology makes old standards irrelevant and creates its own aesthetic.

The computer is dangerous because it shapes your capacity to understand what’s possible. The computer is like an apparently submissive servant that turns out to be a subversive that ultimately gains control of your mind. The computer is such a powerful instrument that it defines, after a while, what is possible for you. And what is possible is within the computer’s capacity. And while it seems in the beginning like this incredibly gifted and talented servant actually has a very limited intelligence — the brain is so much vaster than the computer. But, the computer is very insistent about what it’s good at, and before you know it — it’s like being with somebody who has bad habits, you sort of fall into the bad habits — and it begins to dominate the way you think about what is possible. … [Counter this] by doing things that are uncomfortable for it to do.

What can we do then? To enhance our creative uptake, how do we augment our ongoing environmental influences?

Creativity as an act is less a single moment of insight (though these do happen), but instead a process built inside a set of lifestyle/”purposeful & non-passive” choices, that lead to repeated/repeatable appropriate solutions and “sought insight”.

[…] range and general knowledge across a range of subjects – see notes on the development of a Personal Micro Culture as discussed in a previous session. You have to know/learn a great deal about areas and subjects that will influence the overall […]